Ancient Natural Painkillers

Carotid Compression

One of the means of alleviating pain was to render a patient unconscious. Ancient doctors sometimes squeezed the carotid arteries in their patients’ necks, thereby reducing, if not temporarily shutting off, the blood flow from the heart to the brain. Aristotle wrote of the effectiveness of carotid compression in causing unconsciousness. “If these veins [sic] are pressed externally, men, though not actually choked, become insensible, and fall flat on the ground.” The ancients’ awareness that unconsciousness could be produced in this fashion is indicated by the fact that the word karotids or karos means “to stupefy or plunge into a deep sleep.” Rufus of Ephesus (c. AD 100) claimed that the neck arteries were called carotid arteries because the compression of them caused stupor or sleep. A sculpture on the south side of the Parthenon in Athens shows a centaur compressing the left carotid artery of a Lapith warrior. This also indicates that the ancient Greeks were aware of the effectiveness of this technique in rendering an individual unconscious. The same maneuver that was used in war was sometimes employed in medicine.